Bottom Line

Mirrorless system cameras have come a long way since the first Micro Four Thirds models debuted in 2008. Early models were compact and leaders in image quality, but suffered from slow focus and burst rates. Some entry-level models still suffer from slower focus, but premium cameras have come a long way. The Samsung NX1 ($1,499.99, body only) is the first mirrorless camera we've seen that outpaces D-SLRs in burst shooting, it offers the highest resolution that you'll find in any APS-C sensor camera, and it records video at up to 4K resolution. There's a lot of competition at the high-end of the mirrorless market, but the NX1 is first among a few near equals, and we're making it our Editors' Choice in this category, displacing our previous favorite, the Olympus OM-D E-M1.

Design and Features

The NX1 takes its design cues from SLRs, with an EVF that's centered behind the lens mount and a fairly deep handgrip. It measures 4 by 5.5 by 2.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.2 pounds. That's smaller and lighter than the closest SLR in terms of performance, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II (4.4 by 5.9 by 3.1 inches, 2 pounds), and in line with other top-end mirrorless cameras like the Fujifilm X-T1 (3.5 by 5.1 by 1.8, 15.5 ounces).

The body is sealed against dust and moisture, but you'll want to pair the camera with a sealed lens to completely protect it. Samsung currently has two sealed lenses in its catalog, the Samsung 16-50mm f/2-2.8 S ED OIS and Samsung 50-150mm f/2.8 S ED OIS. Both lenses are optically stabilized; the NX1 doesn't offer in-body stabilization like you'll find with the OM-D E-M1 and other Olympus mirrorless cameras.

The control layout isn't that far off from what you'll find on an SLR either. The front includes a depth-of-field preview button, which is placed at the bottom, near the handgrip, so that it can be activated with your right ring finger. The other front control is the button that's used to detach the lens. The release button for the pop-up flash is located on the front as well, just to the left of the flash itself.

On the top plate, to the left of the hot shoe, there's a dial that controls the drive mode. It has four buttons on its top that adjust the ISO, white balance, metering pattern, and autofocus mode. To the hot shoe's right there's a lockable mode dial, a monochrome information LCD with a button to activate its backlight, and the AEL button. The top of the handgrip houses a control wheel, the power switch and shutter release, a movie record button, and an exposure compensation button.

Rear controls include an EVF toggle switch (there's also an eye sensor if you prefer to automatically switch between the EVF and rear display), a Wi-Fi button, a standard control wheel and a flat command dial, the AF ON button, the Fn button, and standard playback, menu, and delete controls. The flat command dial has four directional controls and a center OK button that allows you to set the active autofocus area. Many of the control buttons and all of the dials can be customized to suit your shooting style; I set the front wheel for direct control over EV, the rear wheel to adjust shutter speed or aperture depending on shooting mode, and the flat dial to adjust the size of the active autofocus point.

The Fn button launches an on-screen menu control panel that allows you to adjust most shooting controls, including aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, autofocus settings, and white balance. It can be navigated using the directional presses of the rear command dial or via touch.

The rear display is mounted on a hinge and can tilt up or down so you can shoot at waist-level or hold the camera above your head to frame a shot. It's not quite as adjustable as a vari-angle display, like the one you'll find on the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II. It's an AMOLED design, rather than the more common LCD; AMOLED shows a punchier, high-contrast look in comparison. The display is quite sharp, packing 1,036k dots into its 3-inch frame. At default brightness it's fine for most outdoor use, and it's possible to increase brightness when you're working under bright sunlight.

The EVF is also an OLED. Its resolution is 2,360k-dots, on par with the best you'll find in this class. The Olympus OM-D E-M1 and Fujifilm X-T1 offer similar EVFs. It's also quite large, with a 1.04x magnification factor, which presents an image that's as big to your eye as you'll find in the best mirrorless cameras as well. It doesn't articulate, like the one that Samsung includes in its midrange NX30, an engineering decision that was made to make the NX1 as small as possible.

Samsung was one of the first camera makers to really embrace Wi-Fi integration, and the NX1 packs the most refined wireless feature set that it's put in a camera to date. It supports dual band communication, so you can use a 5GHz signal to transfer images or control the NX1 via your smartphone or tablet in environments with heavy 2.4GHz traffic. The camera also features Bluetooth; it's used to automatically set the date and time, add GPS coordinates to images, and to keep the connection between the phone and camera alive for quick transfers. But Bluetooth only works if you have an Android phone—it's not available with iOS devices due to security settings in the operating system.

The free Samsung Camera Manager app is used to transfer images and control the NX1 remotely. It gives you complete manual control over camera settings, and the ability to tap on an area of the Live View feed to focus and fire the shutter. Only JPG images can be copied over to a smartphone or tablet, but the camera does allow you to develop a Raw image and output a JPG file via its menu system. It's a manual process, but a quick one; some other mirrorless cameras, including most models from Sony, will automatically create a JPG from a Raw image for wireless transmission.

Performance and Conclusions

The NX1 is built for speed. It starts and shoots in less than 0.8-second, locks focus and fires in about 0.05-second, and can rattle off shots at about 14.7fps. A shutter that can open and close at speeds as quick as 1/8,000-second certainly helps the burst rate, and makes it possible to shoot at wider apertures in bright light without the aid of a neutral density filter. Focus does slow a bit in dim light, to about 1.2 seconds, but that's still quicker than the Fujifilm X-T1. The X-T1 requires about 1.4 seconds to start and shoot, focuses in 0.1-second in bright light and in 1.5 seconds in dim conditions, and tops out at 8.3fps.

If the NX1 has a weakness in burst shooting, it's the buffer size. The camera can capture 12-bit Raw files in continuous drive mode (the bit depth increases to 14 when in capturing single images), but if you shoot Raw or Raw+JPG you'll only be able to capture 20 photos before the buffer fills—that's just a little more than 1 second of action. If you switch to JPG mode the NX1 manages to keep up the pace for 72 shots. Regardless of what format you use, you'll have to wait about 10 seconds for the buffer to fully clear. A SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-II 280MBps memory card was used for speed testing.

Our standard speed tests are performed with locked autofocus, but the NX1 is also a formidable camera in terms of tracking moving subjects. With continuous focus enabled the camera still fires shots at 11.9fps, and it keeps them in sharp focus even when moving the camera away and toward our test target. The NX1 has a hybrid autofocus system that incorporates an absurd amount of phase and contrast detection points on its sensor, giving it a leg up over the competition when it comes to keeping your subject in sharp focus. The camera also includes a mode that is designed to capture certain types of sports action, including the exact moment that a batter hits a ball, which is a boon for sports photographers.

I'm reviewing the NX1 as a body only, but as its 28-megapixel image sensor is the highest resolution you'll find in the APS-C class, I did look and see how it performed in terms of sharpness when paired with the 50-150mm f/2.8 S ED OIS lens. I used Imatest to check and see just how well the lens performed when paired with the NX1. When stopped down to f/8 the lens managed more than 3,000 lines per picture height, better than the 1,800 lines we like to see in a photo.

Imatest also looks at noise. Despite having a high pixel count, the NX1 does quite well in terms of noise control. The sensor uses a BSI-CMOS design, which gives it a leg up in low-light performance; it's the largest BSI-CMOS sensor you can find in a consumer camera. The NX1 keeps noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 6400 when shooting JPGs at default settings. Close examination of our ISO test scene on a calibrated NEC MultiSync PA271W shows that detail is fairly strong here, although not quite as crisp as it is at ISO 3200. There's an increase in noise and a drop in fidelity at ISO 12800, but images are still useable. At ISO 25600 and 51200 JPG output leaves a lot to be desired.

That's not the case when shooting in the uncompressed Raw format. No noise reduction is applied, so while Raw files have more grain at high ISOs than processed JPGs, they also show a lot more detail. Detail is crisp through ISO 12800, and while there's quite a bit of noise at ISO 25600, the fine lines in our ISO test scene are still visible. Photos are very grainy at ISO 51200, with detail suffering even in Raw, but it's a setting that can be useable in a pinch, or if you are intentionally trying to give photos a rough, gritty look. I've included both Raw and JPG crops from each full-stop ISO that the camera supports in the accompanying slideshow.

The NX1 is beyond solid in the imaging department, but it packs some serious video features. It supports 4K (4,096 by 2,160) video at 24fps and UHD (3,840 by 2,160) at 30fps, 24fps, or 23.98fps, as well as 1080p footage at all standard frame rates up to 60fps, and 720p footage at 30 or 60fps. There are a number of features that appeal to pro use, including adjustable gamma, black level control, adjustable focus speed, audio level adjustment, and clean 8-bit 4:2:0 4K output over micro HDMI. There's a microphone input port to connect an external mic, and a headphone jack for monitoring.

The video quality is outstanding. It's crisp, the NX1 is quick to focus, and there are options to shoot at very high bitrates. The HEVC (h.265) codec that is used to encode video is fairly new, and you may need to transcode it in order to edit, or even play back, the footage on a computer. Samsung includes software to transcode the footage with the camera (just plug the NX1 into your computer and download via the iLauncher interface), or you can opt for a third-party application like Wondershare to convert the video. I used Wondershare to transcode the embedded 4K sample footage to MP4 format so that I could edit it in Adobe Premiere Pro and upload to YouTube.

The NX has a single memory card slot that supports SD, SDHC, and SDXC cards. There's a USB 3.0 port to connect to a computer. USB is also used to charge the removable battery in-camera—an AC adapter is included. The battery is rated for 500 shots by CIPA, and while that's not as good as an SLR, I got more shots per charge with the NX1 than I did with a full-frame mirrorless model like the Sony Alpha 7 II. It's always wise to carry a spare battery if you're going to be using the camera for an extended time period; an extra battery sells for about $43 and a charger is $30.

The Samsung NX1 is a testament to just how far mirrorless cameras have come since their debut. Its autofocus system is the best we've seen in a mirrorless camera, and its near 15fps burst rate is better than you'll find in even the highest end D-SLR. The shooting buffer does limit how long you can fire off shots, but you can always set the frame rate to a lower number to capture action over a longer interval; an SLR like the Canon 7D Mark II wins out if you need to capture bursts of hundreds of images at a clip. It's an extremely capable camera, with best-in-class resolution in an APS-C body, 4K video, a weather-sealed design, and a solid lens system that includes both pro-grade zoom lenses and wide-aperture prime optics. If you don't need such a a high burst rate, there are other excellent cameras in this class, including the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and Fujifilm X-T1, and if you're more of a landscape photographer a full-frame model like the Sony Alpha 7R might be a better fit. But as an all-arounder, it's tough to argue with the capabilities and performance offered by the NX1. That makes it our Editors' Choice.

About the Author

Senior digital camera analyst for the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team, Jim Fisher is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he concentrated on documentary video production. Jim's interest in photography really took off when he borrowed his father's Hasselblad 500C and light meter in 2007.

He honed his writing skills at retailer B&H Photo, where he wrote thousands upon thousands of product descriptions, blog posts, and reviews. Since then he's shot with hundreds of camera models, ranging from pocket point-and-shoots to medium format digital cameras. And he's reviewed almost all of them. When he's not testing cameras and gear for PCMag, he's likely out and about shooting with … See Full Bio